I created an accelerator so you can select a word and have it translated from English to Swedish or Swedish to English using Tyda. To install the accelerator click on the button at the top that says “Översätt med Tyda”

Documentation to create your own accelerator is found here. It just took a few minutes creating the Tyda-accelerator.

As I previously found there was a problem with the CSS and JavaScript hybrid drop down menu I have on www.jtbworld.com and as I have not found any solution yet I decided to add the following to the HEAD of these pages. (right after the <head> tag)

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

Now anyone visiting using Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 does not need to click on the Compatibility View button to be able to use the menus. The meta tag makes Internet Explorer 8 render the webpage like Internet Explorer 7.

Not many visit the site uses IE8 but according to Google Analytics 0.57% (the small red slice) of the visits last week was from users using IE8. IE7 is what most have followed by IE6. But I expect this to increase.

Friday, August 29, 2008

I got a request from a little penguin named Saraapril and couldn’t resist trying to help. It seems like Disney Club Penguin have some major problems working on Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2.

I found a workaround that Saraapril published on her Club Penguin Blog for some of the problems but for others like the arrow keys in one of the games it just didn’t work. IE8 definitely triggers the problem but it can also be related to Adobe Flash Player compatibility problems.

Update. The problem is still existing in the final version of Internet Explorer 8.

I just installed Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 and after restarting the PC I got this warning. I’m pretty sure it is safe to allow this program so I gave it a try. Have you also seen this? Is this a false positive or not?

Windows Live OneCare Firewall has blocked a program from accessing the Internet. The firewall has blocked this program temporarily so that you can decide whether to allow it to access the Internet. You should only allow programs to do this if you trust the program and its publisher.

The options are Allow this program (Always allow this program to access the Internet.), Block this program (Always prevent this program from accessing the Internet.) and Block for now and ask me again later.

It’s no guarantee of course but it has happened to Mozy users according to their latest newsletter.

“We don't take the charge to use technology For Good and For Awesome lightly. We've helped users track down stolen laptops on several occasions by turning connection logs over to law enforcement after a thief inevitably connects the pilfered goods to the Internet without disabling Mozy's periodic backups. This is both Good and Awesome.”

Get 2GB Mozy backup space online for free. Having used Mozy for a long time I can agree that they provide a both Good and Awesome service.

Have you run into a problem that the dates or time in a table, query, form or report are sorted as plain text instead of in date order as expected?

Notice that the columns Test1 and Test3 below does not sort correctly.

The reason in this case is that Format has been used and one way to solve it is to use the CDate function to make sure the format of the files is as a date instead of text.

For the Test3 column the solution is to also include a column that is in “Date” format as the Long Date format cannot be converted to Date format using CDate.

Here is the Access query as SQL: SELECT DateTest.DateField, Format([DateField],"Short Date") AS Test1, CDate(Format([DateField],"Short Date")) AS Test2, Format([DateField],"Long Date") AS Test3 FROM DateTest;

The following images shows the problem to sort Test1 and that it works with Test2.

Here is the Access query as SQL: SELECT DateTest.DateField, Format([DateField],"Long Time") AS Test1, CDate(Format([DateField],"Long Time")) AS Test2 FROM DateTest;

If you have problem to sort by date order directly on a table make sure the field Data Type is Date/Time or you need to use a query and convert to date format.

Microsoft Access sort dates or times, according to the Regional and Language Settings of the Control Panel in Windows. This is not so much problem for some date and time formats like Swedish used in Sweden but it sure is with American English format. Something to consider when developing for international customers.

This test is done with Microsoft Access 2007 but the solution to the problem applies to older versions as well.

What sorting trick would you use if you for some reason need to use the Format function?

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

“It is my opinion that Autodesk is in the early stages of implementing a bold Internet-centric strategy that if successful will position it as the Software + Services giant within the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry.”

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

AutoCAD Revit Architecture Suite 2009 now comprises AutoCAD, Revit Architecture and AutoCAD Architecture. The point release 2009.1 of Revit Architecture Suite 2009 will begin to ship 15th of September with no price change.

ACA 2009 as part of the suit will only be available to subscription customers.

If you are have network licenses of the AutoCAD Revit Architecture Suite you will need to request a new license file to be able to run also ACA as part of the suit offering.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Automatic Product Updates is not something new as it has been in place for quite a while now. Subscription Bonus Packs has also existed under other names before in one way or the other. Express Tools is one I’m thinking of. But Autodesk calls this the new Flexible Software Delivery model. Personally I think this is a good move. I’ve also got confirmed that ADN (Autodesk Developer Network) members will get access to some of the news like Bonus Packs that are available to subscription customers.

Autodesk is adopting a new Flexible Software Delivery model for AutoCAD software. This new software development and delivery model is designed to increase customer satisfaction and subscription value by providing AutoCAD customers with earlier access to new features, delivered on demand, and provide them with the flexibility to choose which features to install and use.

"Many leading software companies, including Microsoft, Symantec and Intuit, have adopted this new model of software delivery to help their customers maximize their technology investments. We are excited to introduce this innovative approach to AutoCAD," said Guri Stark, vice president, AutoCAD and Platform Products. "Customers on subscription will have earlier access to advanced features and no longer need to worry about upgrades -- they can just plug in the new feature packs they want and bypass those they may not need. We're also automating the delivery of product updates and hotfixes to all users of AutoCAD, ensuring all our customers now have access to the latest technologies as quickly as possible."

The new Flexible Software Delivery model for AutoCAD consists of two primary components: Subscription Bonus Packs and Product Updates.

Subscription Bonus Packs

Subscription Bonus Packs containing new software features are now available to AutoCAD subscription customers through the Autodesk Subscription Center. Subscription customers account for about 75 percent of licensed AutoCAD users. Subscription Bonus Packs will be released regularly and customers will be able to pick and choose which bonus packs to install, providing them greater flexibility in how they deploy their software. AutoCAD customers not on Autodesk Subscription may have access to features from the Subscription Bonus Packs in future product releases. The first AutoCAD 2009 Subscription Bonus Pack, now available for download, provides many useful features that were requested by members of the AUGI (Autodesk User Group International) community.

"Having the option to improve and extend the capabilities of AutoCAD with the use of the Subscription Bonus Pack between full product releases is valuable to our company and is accelerating our ROI," said Keith Rice, CAD Administrator, Pennoni Associates Inc.

Automatic Product Updates

Relying on critical data from the AutoCAD Customer Involvement Program (CIP) and Customer Error Reporting (CER) utility, Product Updates are now automatically delivered to all licensed AutoCAD customers, providing faster and more regular access to patches and fixes. AutoCAD CIP and CER information also provides the development team with near real-time information on product usage, guiding them on key focus areas within the application. The CER system also provides customers with immediate solutions to product failures by automatically sending users emails after a product crash. To date, about 200,000 solutions have been delivered to users, helping to reduce the impact to customer productivity.

“No, an existing application does not have to be recompiled or changed in any way to take advantage of this. Your current 2.0 Applications will just work, you don't have to target anything new in 3.5..”

I got a question how to force load a profile in AutoCAD without having to do it manually.

‘Hi I was looking at your AutoLisp but I don’t think I saw anything like Loading an profile each time you open AutoCAD, let’s say I have a Profile call “General” And I wanna open AutoCAD with that profile. I know there is a switch but once it loads it does not do it anymore . the reason why I want to do is If I chance something in the profile and export it when a different user go into AutoCAD I want them to autoload most recent Profile rather then unupdated one.’

I added the function forceImport to profiles.lsp. acad.lsp was then used to have it run each time AutoCAD started.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Old news but I don’t think many have seen it so here comes a link to SolidWorks Labs Introducing BluePrint Now.
Here I have a drawing that I made from one of the sample drawings in AutoCAD 2009 and uploaded it. I’m able to make changes to it and save it back to a DWG file. I can even start a new drawing from scratch.
Support for easy zoom and pan with the mouse, dimensioning (didn’t scale good), texting (minor text height problems), drawing, modifying (could not get some of the tools like scale to work), snapping (missing perpendicular), etc.
Microsoft Silverlight is used as technology.
Autodesk also has a SaaSy editor, but Project Draw does not support DWG.

Friday, August 8, 2008

SmartPurger has support to run a script or AutoLISP file and here is a sample I showed a client how to do to save drawings to AutoCAD 2000 DXF file format. It can easily be change to save to other DXF versions like AutoCAD 2007 DXF, AutoCAD 2004 DXF or AutoCAD R12 DXF.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

In SSMPropEditor you might notice in the tree view like below that there is no distance between lowercase a and l in Architectural and Electrical but it look just fine with Structural and Mechanical. Why is this happening?

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Read the interesting article here on Cadalyst by Evan Yares (former president of the OpenDWG Alliance (ODA, now Open Design Alliance, http://www.opendesign.com/). With his background he is able to fill in with background details like the OpenDGN project.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Cuil (pronounced COOL) that recently was introduced to the public sure does have a problem to find relevant results.

Just as an example. When I searched for JTB World it shows a spam blog as first result.

Competing with other search engines will require it to work much better than this. It doesn’t help that it says “Search 121,617,892,992 web pages”. I have even found several examples when Google or Live Search finds a webpage that Cuil does not find at all so I’m not sure what kind of website it indexes as so many are not indexed.